A History of Violence

Plot

Tom Stall is a diner owner who lives in the rural town of Millbrook, Indiana, with wife Edie, teenage son Jack, and daughter Sarah. One night, two spree killers attempt to rob the restaurant. When a waitress is threatened, Tom deftly kills both robbers with skill and precision. He is hailed as a hero, and the story is picked up by the national news media.

Soon after, Tom is visited by Philadelphia-based mobster Carl Fogarty, who alleges that Tom is actually a former mob hitman named Joey Cusack. He vehemently denies this, but Carl remains persistent and begins to stalk the Stall family. Under pressure from him and his newfound fame, Tom's relationship with his family becomes strained. Following an argument with Tom over the use of violence on a bully at his school, Jack runs away. He is caught by Carl, who, with Jack as his hostage, goes with his henchmen to the Stall house and demands that "Joey" return to Philadelphia with them. After the gangsters release Jack, Tom efficiently kills both of Carl's henchmen, but Carl shoots and incapacitates him. Lying injured, Tom admits that he "should have killed you (Fogarty) back in Philly", confirming his true identity. Carl is flattered by the proclamation, but before he can shoot him dead, Jack kills him.

At the hospital, Edie confronts Tom, who admits to being Joey Cusack. He tells her that he ran from Philadelphia to escape his criminal past. This admission deepens the tensions in their marriage. After Tom gets out of the hospital, the local sheriff Sam expresses his concern and suspicions. Just as he is about to confess, Edie lies to Sam and convinces him to leave. The couple then gets into a domestic dispute, culminating in violent sex. Afterward, Edie and Jack continue to further distance themselves from Tom, leaving him isolated.

Tom's brother, crime boss Richie Cusack, calls him and demands his return to Philadelphia, threatening to come to Indiana if he does not. In Philadelphia, Tom learns that the mobsters he offended took out their frustrations on Richie, penalizing him financially and delaying his advancement in the organization. Tom offers to make peace, but Richie orders his men to kill his brother. Tom manages to kill most of the gangsters and escapes. As Richie and his last henchman are hunting for him, Tom kills the henchman, takes his gun, and kills Richie when he tricks him into exiting the house.

Tom returns home, where the atmosphere is tense and silent as the family sits around the dinner table. His young daughter eventually hands him a dinner plate. Some moments later, his son offers him a communal plate of food, and Edie looks at Tom with tears in her eyes.

Cast

• Viggo Mortensen as Joey Cusack / Tom Stall
• Maria Bello as Edie Stall
• Ed Harris as Carl Fogarty
• William Hurt as Richie Cusack
• Ashton Holmes as Jack Stall
• Peter MacNeill as Sheriff Sam Carney
• Stephen McHattie as Leland Jones
• Greg Bryk as Billy Orser
• R. D. Reid as Pat
• Sumela Kay as Judy
• Gerry Quigley as Mick
• Deborah Drakeford as Charlotte
• Heidi Hayes as Sarah Stall
• Aidan Devine as Charlie Roarke
• Bill McDonald as Frank Mulligan
• Michelle McCree as Jenny Wyeth
• Ian Matthews as Ruben
• Morgan Kelly as Buddy
• Kyle Schmid as Bobby

Production

The film is loosely based on the original graphic novel. Screenwriter Josh Olson intended from the beginning to use the original story as a springboard to explore the themes that interested him.

Mortensen read Olson's original version of the script and "was quite disappointed. It was 120-odd pages of just mayhem; kind of senseless, really." He only agreed to do the movie after meeting with Cronenberg, who (according to Mortensen) reworked the script.

Most of the film was shot in Millbrook, Ontario. The shopping centre scene was shot in Tottenham, Ontario, and the climactic scene was shot at the historic Eaton Hall Mansion, located in King City, Ontario. Harrison Ford turned down the role of Tom Stall. Cronenberg stated that "I think it took three weeks to edit".

Alternate versions

The U.S. and European versions differ on only two fight scenes - one where Tom breaks the nose of one of Fogarty's thugs and one where he stomps on the throat of one of Richie Cusack's thugs. Both scenes display more blood flowing or gushing out of the victims in the European version. In addition, a more pronounced bone-crushing sound effect is used when Tom stomps on the thug's throat.

A deleted scene, known as "Scene 44", features a dream sequence in the diner, where Fogarty tells Tom he will kill his family and him, to which Tom responds by shooting him with his shotgun at close range. He then approaches Fogarty's mangled body, which raises a gun and shoots him. In behind the scenes footage, Cronenberg expressed apprehension about the scene's similarity to his previous work. He even suggested a desire to have Fogarty retrieve the gun from his chest cavity had the action not been too similar to a scene from Videodrome.

Interpretation

The film's title plays on multiple levels of meaning. Film critic Roger Ebert stated that Cronenberg refers to three possibilities:

Cronenberg himself described the film as a meditation on the human body and its relationship to violence:

For me the first fact of human existence is the human body. I'm not an atheist, but for me to turn away from any aspect of the human body to me is a philosophical betrayal. And there's a lot of art and religion whose whole purpose is to turn away from the human body. I feel in my art that my mandate is to not do that. So whether it's beautiful things—the sexuality part, or the violent part or the gooey part—it's just body fluids. It's when Elliott in Dead Ringer (sic) says, "Why are there no beauty contests for the insides of bodies?" It's a thought that disturbs me. How can we be disgusted by our own bodies? That really doesn't make any human sense. It makes some animal sense but it doesn't make human sense so I'm always discussing that in my movies and in this movie in particular. I don't ever feel that I've been exploitive in a crude, vulgar way, or just doing it to get attention. It's always got a purpose which I can be very articulate about. In this movie, we've got an audience that's definitely going to applaud these acts of violence and they do because it's set up that these acts are justifiable and almost heroic at times. But I'm saying, "Okay, if you can applaud that, can you applaud this?" because this is the result of that gunshot in the head. It's not nice. And even if the violence is justifiable, the consequences of the violence are exactly the same. The body does not know what was the morality of that act. So I'm asking the audience to see if they can contain the whole experience of this violent act instead of just the heroic/dramatic one. I'm saying "Here's the really nasty effects on these nasty guys but still, the effects are very nasty." And that's the paradox and conundrum."

Music

The soundtrack to A History of Violence was released on October 11, 2005. The score was composed by Howard Shore.

Release

Theatrical

A History of Violence premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 16, 2005, and was released in the United States on September 30 following a limited release on September 23, 2005.

Home media

The film was released on DVD and VHS formats on March 14, 2006, and was reported by the Los Angeles Times as being the last major Hollywood film to be released on VHS, excluding limited promotional releases. It was released on Blu-ray by Warner Bros. in 2009.

The film was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray (alongside a remastered Blu-ray) on October 21, 2025 by The Criterion Collection.

Reception

Box office

The film started with a limited release in 14 theaters and grossed $515,992 at the box office, averaging $36,856 per theater. A week later, it went on a wide release in 1,340 theaters and grossed $8.1 million over the weekend. During its entire theatrical run, the film grossed $31.5 million in the United States and a total of $61.4 million worldwide.

Critical response

Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.

Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers gave the film four stars, highlighting its "explosive power and subversive wit", and lauded David Cronenberg as a "world-class director, at the top of his startlingly creative form". Entertainment Weekly reviewer Lisa Schwarzbaum gave the film an A, concluding that "David Cronenberg's brilliant movie" was "without a doubt one of the very best of the year".

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called the film a "mindblower", and noted Cronenberg's "refusal to let us indulge in movie violence without paying a price". Roger Ebert also gave the film a positive review, observing, "A History of Violence seems deceptively straightforward, coming from a director with Cronenberg's quirky complexity, but think again. This is not a movie about plot, but about character." He gave it three and a half out of four stars.

It was ranked the best film of 2005 in the Village Voice Film Poll.

In December 2005, it was named to the Toronto International Film Festival's annual Canada's top-ten list of the year's best Canadian films.

BBC film critic Mark Kermode named the film the best of 2005.

Retrospective lists

In 2010, Empire named the film the 448th-greatest film of all time.

The French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma ranked the film as fifth place in its list of best films of the decade, 2000–2009.

In his list of best films of the decade, Peter Travers named this number four, praising director David Cronenberg:

Is Canadian director David Cronenberg the most unsung maverick artist in movies? Bet on it ... Cronenberg knows violence is wired into our DNA. His film showed how we secretly crave what we publicly condemn. This is potent poison for a thriller, and unadulterated, unforgettable Cronenberg.

In 2016, the film was ranked among the 100 greatest films since 2000 in an international critics' poll by 177 critics around the world.

In 2025, it ranked number 33 on Rolling Stones list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century."

Accolades

Indian adaptation

Leo, a 2023 Indian Tamil language film co-written and directed by Lokesh Kanagaraj, is an adaptation of A History of Violence. Lokesh said that Leo is his tribute to David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. According to Lokesh, "it inspired me to write Leo. A History of Violence left its mark on me and from that this movie was born. Leo is my tribute".

References

Works cited

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